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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/constitutionalisOOpani 



The Constitutionalist Government 
Confronted with the Sanitary and 
Educational Problems of Mexico 



:a 



Address Delivered by 

ALBERTO J. )PANI, C. E. 

to the members of the 

American Academy of Political and Social Science 

and of the 

Pennsylvania Arbitration and Peace Society 

in 

"WITHERSPOON HALL," PHILADELPHIA, PA., U. S. A. 

on 

Friday Evening, November 10th, 1916 




Terminal Pump Building, Water Works, Mexico 
City. General Directori Manuel- Marroquin y 
Rivera, C. E3. Architect, Alberto J. Paul, C. E. 

Published by 

LATIN-AMERICAN NEWS ASSOCIATION 
1400 Broadway, New York City 






Does Mexico Interest You? 

Then you should read the following pamphlets: 

What the Catholic Church Has Done for Mexico, by Docto^^ 



$0.10 



0.15 



Paganel ( 

The Agrarian Law of Yucatan .* i 

The Labor Law of Yucatan '^ 

International Labor Forum n 

Intervene in Mexico, Not to Make, but to End Waj;^ urges [ 

Mr. Hearst, with reply by Rolland i 

The President's Mexican Policy, by F. K. Lane 

The Religious Question in Mexico ) 

A Reconstructive Policy in Mexico /• 0.10 

Manifest Destiny ' 

What of Mexico | 

Speech of General Alvarado / 0.10 

Many Mexican Problems ' 

Charges Against the Diaz Administration ^ 

Carranza , ; 0.10 

Stupenduous Issues ' 



Minister of the Catholic Cult ) 

Star of Hope for Mexico > 0.10 

Land Question in Mexico ) 

Open Letter to the Editor of the Chicago Tribune, Chicago, 111. i 

How We Robbed Mexico in 1848, by Robert H. Howe J 0.10 

What the Mexican Conference Really Means ) 

The Economic Future of Mexico 

We also mail any of these pamphlets upon receipt of 5c each. 



Address all communications to 

LATIN-AMERICAN NEWS ASSOCIATION 
1400 Broadway, New York City 






THE CONSTITUTIONALIST GOVERNMENT CONFRONT- 
ED WITH THE SANITARY AND EDUCATIONAL 
PROBLEMS OF MEXICO. 



Mr. Chairman : 

Members of the Academy and of the Pennsylvania Arbitra- 
tion and Peace Society: 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — 

During the most acute and violent period of an Armed 
Revolution — a veritable chaos in which it would seem that 
the people, after destroying eveiything try to commit sui- 
cide in a body — the news of isolated cases however hor- 
rible they may be, cease to cause- a deep impression, be- 
fore the awfulness of the general catastrophe. As the 
struggle reaches some form of organization by the group- 
ing of men around the various nuclei representing the an- 
tagonistic principles in action, individuals grow in import- 
ance until the nucleus which best interpreted the ambitions 
and wants of the people acquires absolute ascendancy. 
Then, this group is unreasonably expected to strictly fulfill 
all the obligations usually incumbent upon a Government 
duly constituted. The sensation then provoked by the news 
of isolated cases of misfortunes suffered by individuals, 
because of their very rarity, cause greater consternation. 

This is precisely what is occurring with the present Mexi- 
can Government. Take any two dates from the beginning 
of its organization. Compare dispassionately the relative 
conditions of national life, and it will be necessary to admit 
that the country is rapidly returning to normal political 
and social conditions. It is also undeniable that the tem- 
porary interruption of a line of communication, or the 
attack on a train or village by rebels or outlaws, now 
causes an exaggerated impression, people forgetting that 
not so long ago, the greater part of the railway lines, or 
the cities of the Republic were in the hands of said rebels 
or outlaws, and that in the very territory dominated by 
the Constitutionalist Government, trains and towns were 
but too frequently assaulted. , 



But it is inconceivable to try to make the present Govern- 
ment responsible for the transgressions of its predecessors. 
The Revolution itself is a natural consequence of these 
faults. Former Governments who knew not how to jJre- 
vent the Revolution, are responsible for the evils which 
it may have brought in its train; and should the Nation 
be saved, as it shall be, it will be due solely to the citizens 
who have been willing to sacrifice themselves. In truth 
it is only through personal sacrifices that it is possible 
to construct a true fatherland. 

The enemies of the new Regime — irreconcilable because 
they will not accept the sacrifices imposed — are now burn- 
ing their last cartridges, making the Constitutionalist 
Government responsible for many of the calamities which 
caused the Revolution, and which the Government, im- 
pelled by the generous impulse which generated it, pur- 
poses to remedy. Thus do we explain the protests of the 
discontented, and the monstrosity that said protests are 
even more energetic and louder when they defend money 
than when they defend life itself. 

The theme of this night's address refers to one of these 
calamities, a shameful legacy of the past. Inimical interests 
are trying to attack the Constitutionalist Government on 
this score, though it is the first Government in Mexico which 
has tried to remedy this evil. Having been appointed by 
the First Chief in charge of the Executive Power of Mex- 
ico, Mr. Carranza, to make the study of the problem, I 
would only have to summarize or copy some fragments 
of the corresponding Report, in ord,er to develop such 
a theme. 

"One of the most imperative obligations that civilization 
imposes upon the State is to duly protect human life, to 
permit the growth of society. It becomes necessary to 
make known the precepts of private Hygiene and to put 
them in practice, and to enforce the precepts of public 
Hygiene. For the first, there is the school as an excellent 
organ of propaganda. For the second, with more direct 
bearing on healthfulness, there are principally special es- 
tablishments to heal, to disinfect, to take prophylactic 
measures. Then there are engineering works, laws and 
regulations put in force by a technical personnel, or by 
an administrative or police corps. It may therefore he 
said Without exaggerating, that there is a necessary rela- 
tion of direct proportion between the sum of civiUzation 
acquired by a country, and the degree of perfection attained 
by its sanitary organization" 

The activities, in this respect, of General Diaz' Govern- 
ment, during the thirty odd years of enforced peace and 
of apparent material well-being, were devoted almost ex- 



clusively to works to gratify the love of ostentation or 
speculation. Seldom were they devoted to the true needs 
of the country. There were erected , magnificent build- 
ings. To build the National Theatre and Capitol, both un- 
finished, it was planned to spend sixty millions of pesos. 
When it was a case of executing works of public utility, 
their construction was made subservient to the illicit ends 
pointed out. Thus for example the works of city improve- 
ment, never finished, not even in the Capital, in spite of the 
conditions of notorious unhealthfulness of some important 
towns, were always begun with elegant and costly asphalt 
pavements, which it became necessary to destroy and re- 
place, whenever a water or drainage pipe had to be laid. 
The work of education undertaken by the Government was 
chiefly dedicated to erecting costly buildings for schools: 
it is only in this way, therefore, that we can realize that 
the proportion of persons knowing how to read and write 
is barely 30% of the total population in the Republic. 

The net result of what was done in these respects dur- 
ing the long administration of General Diaz could not be 
more disastrous. If we take the average of mortality for 
the nine years from 1904 to 1912, the heyday of that ad- 
ministration, we find that in Mexico City, where the great- 
est sum of culture and material progress is to be found, 
there is a rate of mortality of ^2.3 deaths for each one 
thousand inhabitants. That is to say: 

I. — It is nearly three times that prevailing in American 
cities of similar density (16.1) ; 

11. — Nearly two and one half times larger than the average 
coefficient of mortality of comparable European cities 
(17.53) and 

III. — Greater than the coefficient or mortality of the Asiatic 
and African cities of Madras and Cairo (39.51 and 40.15, 
respectively) in spite of the fact that in the former, cholera 
morbus is epidemic. 

The annual average, corresponding to the same period, 
of deaths in the City of Mexico due to avoidable disease, 
if proper care for private and public Hygiene be taken — 
and arraignment against the administration of General 
Diaz — reaches more than 11,500 deaths. Now as the deaths 
occasioned by the Revolution during the six years surely 
do not reach 70,000, then we find that the Government of 
General Diaz — so greatly eulogized — in the midst of peace 
and prosperity, did not kill fewer people than a formidable 
Revolution which set afire the whole Republic, and horri- 
fied the whole world. 

But the truth is that General Diaz' Government did not 
recognize the formula of integral progress — the only one 
which truly ennobles Humanity — and wasted its energies 



in showy manifestations of a progress purely material and 
ficticious, within the inevitable train of vice and corrup- 
tion. The ostentatious pageant — -the most shameless lie 
with which it has ever been attempted to deceive the world 
— which celebrated the anniversary of National Independ- 
ence, took place exactly a few weeks prior to the Popular 
Revolution of 1910, before whose onrush the Government 
fell like a house of cards. 

Let us now turn to the Constitutionalist Government. 
In its banner it has written the resolve to better the condi- 
tion of life of the people, socially and individually, and its 
sincerity and energy may be seen not only in the words 
but in deeds. 

The Constitutionalist Government during its sojourn at 
Vera Cruz at the close of 1914 and the beginning and 
middle of 1915, while the Army reconquered the territoi-y 
of the Republic, at first almost wholly in the hands of the 
enemy, in spite of being engaged in the most active cam- 
paign in the annals of Mexican History, still found time 
to take up the efficient political and admipistrative reor- 
ganization of the country. 

"Whoever may know something of our History, and may 
view with impartiality the long and complicated process 
of the formation of our nationality, from the pre-Cortes 
period — through the troublous time of the Conquest, colo- 
nial days under the viceroys, the wars of Independence, 
the convulsions only calmed by the iron hand of Diaz, of 
nearly one century of autonomous existence — until our own 
time — will be bound to discover in the salient manifesta- 
tions of the life of the national organism, the unequivocal 
symptoms and stygmata of a serious pathological state, 
brought about by two principal agents: the loathsome cor- 
ruption of the upper classes, and the inconscience and 
wretchedness of the lower." 

"The iniquitous means used by Don Porfirio Diaz to 
impose peace, during more than thirty years, not only an- 
nulled all efforts tending to remedy the evils discussed, but 
rather determined their greater intensity. As a matter of 
fact, it satisfied the omnivorous appetites of his friends 
and satellites; it crushed and caused the criminal disap- 
pearance of whomever failed fo render tribute or bow to 
his will; it fostered cowards and sycophants, repressing 
systematically and with an iron hand, every impulse of 
manliness and truth. It placed the administration of jus- 
tice at the unconditional disposal of the rich, paying not 
the slightest heed to the lamentations of the poor. In a 
word it increased the immorality and corruption of the 
small and privileged ruling class and increased in conse- 
quence the sufferings of the immense majority, grovelling 



in ignorance and hunger. Therefore, the thirty or more 
vears of praetorian peace, but served to deepen still further 
the secular chasm of hatred and rancor separating the 
two classes mentioned, and to provoke necessarily and 
fatally the social convulsion, begun in 1910, and which has 
shaken the whole country." 

"The three aspects of the problem which I have presented 
— the economic, intellectual and moral — coincide with the 
purposes of education through schools, as ideally dreamed 
of by thinkers, that is as 'institutions whose object is to 
guide and control the formation of habits to realize the 
highest social good.' But our schools, unfortunately, have 
not yet acquired the necessary strength to assuage in an 
appreciable degree, the horrible ambient immorality, or to 
counterweigh its inevitable effects of social dissolution." 

"The true problem of Mexico consists therefore in hygi- 
enizing the population physically and morally, and in en- 
deavoring to find through all means available, an improve- 
ment in the precarious economical situation of our prale- 
tariatr 

"The part of the solution of the problem which corresponds 
to the Department of Education or to the Municipalities, must 
be realized, establishing and maintaining the greatest pos- 
sible number of schools, to do which, their cost must be 
reduced by means of a rational simplification of organiza- 
ion and of school programs. This must be done without 
1 sing sight of the fact that its preferential orientations 
i ould be marked by: the character essentially technologi- 
cal of the teaching, to co-operate with all the other organs 
of the Government, in the work pf economical improve- 
ment of the masses, and through the diffusion of the ele- 
mental principles of hygiene, as an ethcient protection for 
the race." 

"And finally, as the medium does constitute an educa- 
tional factor more powerful than the schools themselves, 
the country must, before and above all, organize its pub- 
lic administration upon a basis of absolute morality." 

To come to a conclusion, restricting myself to the purpose 
of this address, it will suffice to say: that when the Con- 
stitutionalist Government ruled but an insignificant portion 
of the country there were yet sent to the principal centres 
of culture of the United States several hundred teachers to 
investigate and secure data to reform school matters in Mex- 
ico. This was done at a time when dollars were of great 
importance for the purchase of war material. 

Subsequently, in spite of the countless obstacles which 
seemed to obstruct every step of the Government, the num- 
ber of schools has been greatly increased. It is now much 



greater than it was before the Revolution: in some States 
it has been doubled. Besides there have been effected im- 
portant works of city improvement in Mexico, Saltillo, 
Queretaro, Vera Cruz, etc., and the mouth of the Panuco 
River is about to be dredged. It has been specified in }pk 
respective contract that the soil taken out is to be use^.lQ 
fill in the marshy zone around Tampico, thus eliminaitng 
the chief cause of this city's unhealthfulness. 

In short, in order that the Government which has arisen 
from the Constitutionalist Revolution may realize its pro- 
gram of public betterment, which implies the physical and 
moral hygienizing of Mexico, it is only necessary to give 
it time. Only some magic art could transform in a moment 
a group of human beings into an angel choir, or a piece 
of land into a Paradise. 

Philadelphia, Penn., November 10, 1916. 

A. J. Pani. 



29^ 90 



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